Apple unveiled the iPhone 3G S on Monday, offering more speed, more storage, longer battery life, and a better camera that shoots video, for $199 for 16 GB or $299 for 32 GB. Sounds like a no-brainer
of an upgrade for iPhone users, right? Not exactly, says TechCrunch's MG Siegler. For starters, current iPhone users who are one year into their two-year contracts with AT&T will have to pay $399 and
$499 to upgrade. Why? Because AT&T subsidizes the iPhone down to $199 based on a 2-year agreement with its customers. This way, AT&T doesn't have to eat the cost if users decide not to renew their
two-year agreement. The telecom giant didn't have to do that last year, however, because the original iPhone wasn't subsidized.
So, in a way, the price hike makes sense, but it's still
a bad idea, says Siegler, primarily because "there are no shortage of AT&T iPhone customers who are pissed off at the company" for sketchy service, expensive SMS messaging, and delaying the roll out
of certain features that the rest of the world gets first, among other things. As such, the fact that Apple's exclusivity contract with AT&T expires next year is, in fact, a big reason not to go for
the upgrade, Siegler says, unless of course a new deal materializes soon. "If I learned tomorrow that AT&T and Apple were ending their exclusive deal in 2010, there is no way I would upgrade," he
says. "I'd suck it up and wait for a year."
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